Blog Post

Golden Star Medal | Game Icon | Ilustration

The Golden Star Icon Tutorial, is a intermediate to expert tutorial that focus less on inkscape functionality and more on graphic design workflow. However the results are great and you get to see desing concepts come out that will help to improve your own. The Gradient Tool, Star Tool and Boolean Modes are used most in this tutorial.

First create a star with the Star Tool. In the tool control box section change the corner amount to 5. Then use the Dropper Tool and change the colour to the yellow shown.

lastly look for the star node closest to the center of the star. Using your Left Mouse Button Pull the node downwards to “fatten the star” until it looks like the star below.

Polygon and Star ToolColour Dropper Tool

Golden Star Medal Screen 2

Next we’ll use the Selection Tool. Click once on the shape, and then click once more to activate the skew and rotation transformation handles. Rotate the shape to look like the figure above.

Selection Tool

Golden Star Medal Screen 3

For the next step we will activate the Snap Tool. Makes sure that 1. “Snap Nodes Paths and Handles” 2. “Snap to Cusp Nodes Including Rectangle corners. 3. “Snap to Objects Center of Rotation” 4. “Snap to Center of objects(optional)”.

Then we’ll activate the Bezier Tool. Pick a corner of the star and we’ll draw a line from that corner to the rotational center of the star. Use the magnetic force of the snap to guide the placement of the bezier line. Do this for each corner of the star.

Snap ToolBezier Tool

Golden Star Medal Screen 4

In my experience the rotational center of the star seems to always be off from the actual center of the star. Draw a vertical straight line using the Bezier Tool. Then use the Align and Distribute Tool to center the line with the star. I selected the option “Align to Last Selected” and make sure the star was the last selected. The Align Option used was “Center of Vertical Axis”.

Alignment and Distribution Tool

Using the Node Tool you can highlight all the center nodes for each bezier line. Then you can pull the nodes to the actual center of the shape. Using the vertical line created earlier to guide you.

Nodes Tool

Golden Star Medal Screen 6

Then we’ll grab the Bezier Tool and draw the 3D look of the star as see in the above screen shot.

Fooling the 3D look we are going to selected all of the line beziers we made earlier except the vertical one (which you can delete). Then we are going to navigate to FILE MENU-> PATH -> COMBINE.

Then we will select the new “combined” shape and the star under it and navigate to FILE MENU-> PATH -> DIVISION. This will separate the star into 10 segments. For you to colour in the next step.

Bezier ToolBoolean Modes Tool

Golden Star Medal Screen 7

For this section we’ll use the Gradient Tool “Linear” and colour in the star to give the surface a 3D rendered look. I did the gradient colours as if the light was shining from the top left.

for this one use the colour palette and the screen-shot above to guide you.

Gradient Tool

Once coloured use the Bezier Tool to create an arrow similar to the arrow shown above. This will make the extruding edges of the 3d Star pop, with a colour highlight. You’ll want to do this arrow highlight on the star wherever there is an edge that light would catch. All of the highlights are done relative to where you light source is.

I used a lighter yellow for my highlights.

Bezier Tool

For the most pronounced/lit highlight we will use white. This highlight is where the star is “glowing/emitting light” from. In the previous step we create one “arrow” per edge, for this on however we will create two. One for the blur glow and the second for the inter glow. The inner arrow glow should be on top of the outer glow. The out-glow should be blurred about 1-2% in the Fill and Stroke Dialogue Box which can be found FILE MENU -> OBJECT-> FILL & STROKE.

To add more of a light effect you can use the Gradient Tool on the tool triangle segments from the light source seen in the figure above and add a white gradient stop to the edge closer to the light source. With you Gradient Tool Activate {HOLD CTRL + DOUBLE CLICK} on the gradient path in the place you want the stop to fall.

Gradient Tool

We coloured surface of the star now we move to colour the 3D side elements of the star. First use the Dropper Tool and colour the star orange from the pallete above just as seen in the screenshot above. Then duplicate the 3D side shapes twice with {CTRL + D} Or FILE MENU -> EDIT -> DUPLICATE.

Then using the Fill and Stroke Dialogue Box that we open earlier in the tutorial (if you closed it you can open it with CTRL + SHIFT + F) we are going to: 1. Using the HSL (Hue Saturation and Lightness) Colour shader and lighten the orange slightly as seen the screenshot above and bellow. 2. Blur each of the single duplicates (leave one duplicate un-blurred for each 3D slide object) on by 6.4% and scale the size down slightly.

Colour Dropper Tool

Following from the last step we will select both the blurred and the no blured 3D duplicated objects {RIGHT CLICK) and select Set Clip. You will want to make sure the blured duplicated is under the non blured one.

Golden Star Medal Screen 13

Use the Rectangle Tool to create a ribbon for the completed star.

Oblong/Rectangle Tool

Next we’ll change the rectangle object to a path FILE MENU-> OBJECT -> OBJECT to PATH. We will then select the two bottom nodes using the Node Tool. Navigate to the Tool Controls Box area and select the option “Insert New Nodes into Selected Segment”.

Then select the new created node and pull it down holding {CTRL} to keep the pull straight.

Use the Dropper Tool and change the colour Green.

Nodes ToolColour Dropper Tool

For this step we’ll use the Bezier Tool. and great an internal darker green streak on the ribbon. We’ll use the Beizer Tool to great the frame work for the top gold bar as well.

Bezier Tool

Golden Star Medal Screen 18

Following from the last the step, we are going to make the ribbon more interesting with a shaded inset of colour. This colour will be exclusive to the light green sections of the ribbon. (If you still have the snap tool on, you want to disable it on this step. Or zooming in considerably it could also help)

Use the Bezier Tool to draw the shape out and then use the Gradient tool to fade from a darker green (The same dark green as the stripe) up to full transparency. Do this for both sides, see the above screenshot to guide you.

Bezier Tool

Using the Bezier Tool we will create two light sheen strips and across the ribbon. If your free hand is no so wonderful you can also use a rectangle and click twice to activate the Rotational and Skew handles. Then you can skew the two rectangles to the right-hand-side downwards. Colour both of them white and reduce the first opacity to 70% and the second to 40%.

Bezier ToolOblong/Rectangle ToolSelection Tool

For the last step of the Golden Star Icon Tutorial, we will add the glow of the gold bar at the top.

Firstly Colour in the shapes for the bar, both the 3D and the front facing rectangle as seen above using the Dropper Tool.

Then duplicate the front facing rectangle with {CTRL + D} then blur the shape with the Fill Stroke and Dialogue Box (CTRL + SHIFT + F) if you closed it accidentally. In the new versions of Inkscape it tends to collapse but can still be expanded on the right of your screen by double clicking it.

Blur its about 6.4% and use the HSL tab in the Fill and Stroke Dialogue Box to brighten the yellow as seen above. Lastly Scale the shape down a bit so the blue radius dose not pass the shape under it.